Canine Camo!

Jamie Here!

A couple of years ago I received the coolest flannel Pajamas ever from my parent's for Christmas. They are great not only because they are comfy wash after wash -- but they are also covered in dogs!

Well, while Christmas shopping this past year I nearly lost it when I saw Target (where mine came from) had the same PJ's available in Sydney's size!!! Needless to say -- we bought them. They are an exact match for mine -- pocket for pocket -- except no drawstring waist and the fabric pattern is scaled down for kiddies. So cute! Anyway, we finally thought we'd share our joint coolness (being with Sydney makes me cool right?)


Aren't we fashionable!?


The PJs are easy to move in too!


Syd blends right in -- cool camouflage!

A Hip-Hopping Happy Easter

It was a very good Easter! Sydney woke up in a great mood as you can see here:


We got her up and brought her downstairs to see what the Easter Bunny had brought. She found Easter Eggs hidden all over the living room!




Here is even a short video of the first eggs she found. She picked up on how to find the eggs and put them in her basket fairly quickly...



Sydney still had the surprise of finding her hidden Easter basket with a few little goodies in it/with it. She seemed to like it. What do you think?



At this point everyone needed to get ready for church, so of course Sydney needed to get into her new Easter Dress, and of course you can't get a new Easter dress without some pictures.





We spent the afternoon at Grandma and Grandpa Egg's house. Had a wonderful lunch. Sydney was in heaven. Her favorite parts of the meal were the mashed potatoes and a tiny cupcake she received for desert.

As the day was winding down Sydney found Danny's parent's dog's crate. She loves to play with our crates at home and this one seemed just as great.


We even locked the crate door (she prefers the doors closed. Usually saying "bye-bye" and shutting them herself) and she loved being closed inside of it, so of course we had to take a short video that shows how much she truly enjoyed being in the crate and how lady-like she was being in her Easter Dress:



Hope your Easter was great too, we love you all -- and remember the reason we celebrate Easter -- God loves you too! :-)

Family Gaming Weekend 2008

Each spring we try and have Gary Wine (Jamie's Uncle) down for the weekend and we play board games, startegy board games to be more precise. This year Jamie left after Gary arrived and went to her parents house for the weekend with Sydney. Leaving the guys to game!

Of course to start the weekend you have to stock up on the needed supplies.

And those are just the supplies that did not need to refrigerated.

We played many 2 player strategy games (that can be more players too). Including:

Fill-Or-Bust


Quiddler

Of course not a great game for a bad speller like me.

Alhambra


Carcassone City (has some great twists to the game).


Both Friday night and Saturday night Brian Riechenbach (a best buddy from high school who is pretty much family!) came over and played games (Friday until 2:00 in the morning and Saturday until 4:00 in the morning) Of course we had to have food and of course there was always some good smack talk.




Note: The game took about 2 hours and 10 minutes.

We played many games, but the most exciting game was our Starfarers of Catan game. Can't you tell?!



We also played games of:

El Grande:


Risk


All in all we played many many many games. Here is a pile of games that were played. There is only one game missing from this pile that we played, and that was Atlantic Storm, which is a great war card game that is out of print.


It was a fun weekend!

Potter- Winter Training

With the long winter we have had I have moved to the basement to train with the dogs



I have worked with Guinan and Frodo, but my main focus has been Potter. I thought I would share a bit with his progress. I have been trying to get him to want the disc all winter with not much success, but then I had to take time off for my toe (see previous post), and when I came back it was a different story (absence makes the heart grow fonder?). His flips and catches got much better!



Distance has never been something he has liked to do much, even chasing rollers, but thought I would try 5-10 yards in the basement. We are having much better luck now.



And then there is vaulting. A no no, for young dogs, but a couple vaults on padded ground isn't too bad. He seems to be getting the hang of it!




We will keep you posted on his progress!

Danny's pain in the...

As some of you probably know I am big lover of sand V-Ball




I play every summer from June-September in a 4’s league. We have a blast. And we aren’t too bad if I do say so myself. Two years ago while playing I was running from the back of the court to the front of the court, someone hit a ball over my head I tried to stop quick so I shoved my right foot into the sand. My big toe found the drainage pipe under the sand. That did not feel too good. In fact it hurt really bad! I assumed it was badly bruised so I tried to just let it heal, but 9 months later I finally decided to go see a doctor about it. They X-rayed the toe and found nothing wrong. He gave me some cream for my toe and sent me on my way. A year later I went back to him for the same toe (if you are keeping track we are now on summer of 2007). He decided to give me cortisone injection in my toe. Let me tell you that is not an experience that you really want to have. But the pain went away!

Around Christmas-time 2007 the pain returned so I went back to see the doctor, he gave me another cortisone injection, they actually had to inject it twice. They figured one time is fun, 2 times would be blast. They decided to do another X-Ray just to see if anything had manifested itself since the last X-Ray a year and a half ago. This time something did pop out. I had a bone spur on my big toe that was causing the pain. After seeing this I was sent to a specialist. They immediately said they could do a quick surgery and have it taken care of.




Off to surgery I went on February 11th. They gave me some nice drugs and knocked me out. The doctor then went in and sanded off the bone spur. I then got to spend the rest of the day at home, but (everyone here knows how stubborn I am) the next day I was back to work.




I had to keep my foot elevated for a couple of days, but it wasn’t too bad. Since then I have had the wrap removed that you see in the photo. In fact as of this past weekend I am back to wearing a normal shoe on my foot. There is still some black and blue spots, but it looks like it will probably heal it very nicely.